David Hicks: The 'Aussie Taliban'

Saturday 3 August 2013

Sydney, Aug 4 (Newswire): To some, Hicks is a totem for the injustice and excess of the Bush administration's "war on terror".

Should David Hicks be allowed to profit from his memoir, Guantanamo: My Journey?

The book, published in October last year, provides an account of the five years that the "Aussie Taliban" spent as a detainee at America's controversial detention centre in Cuba, and details allegations of torture against his American captors.

Hicks, who famously wore the wristband Detainee 002, claims he was subjected to stress positions, sensory deprivation and music played at extremely high volume - ear-blasting tunes which reportedly included the theme from Bob the Builder.

The book has sold about 30,000 copies, and Hicks would have received a significant advance.

For the Australian government, the issue is clear-cut: David Hicks pleaded guilty before a US military commission of providing material support for terrorism and the book therefore comes under the Commonwealth Proceeds of Crime Act, which prevents convicted criminals of profiting from their crimes.

For the Hicks family, the issue is also uncomplicated. They are arguing that his conviction should not be recognised by the Australian courts because the US military commission at Guantanamo Bay should not be recognised as a valid legal body. On this point, the entire case might ultimately turn.

Put simply: is the military commission legal, and, thus, is David Hicks a criminal in the strictly legal sense of that term?

The Australian Greens, which have labelled the prosecution a "political show trial," have argued that the US Supreme Court has already ruled that the military commission, are unconstitutional. End of story. But this ignores the crucial fact that the US Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in December 2006, which gave the commissions a statutory basis.

Hicks appeared in June 2007, after the legislation had come into effect, which, presumably, strengthens the Australian government's case. The Greens have also argued against the futility of an expensive legal process that will recoup a relatively small amount of money. They've also claimed that the prosecution smacks of censorship by another means: that it is designed to deter authors from publishing politically sensitive material.

What people think about the prosecution obviously will be determined to a large extent by what they think about David Hicks. To many on the left in Australia, he became a totem for the injustices and excesses of the Bush administration's "war on terror". His detention without trial at Guantanamo also violated a very elemental sense of Australian fair play. Controversially, the former jackaroo received a standing ovation when he made a rare public appearance at the Sydney Writers Festival in May.

For the right, meanwhile, the support he continues to receive offers more proof of the left's credulousness and instinctive anti-Americanism. How could it be, they ask, that a man accused of joining the Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and who allegedly received weapons training at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan could become a poster boy for progressives?

For some journalists and experts who have covered the post-9/11 beat, a central problem with the Hicks book is editorial rather than legal. It has been called a tell-all memoir, but the criticism is that the 35-year-old failed to deliver a more thorough account of his time in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As I have noted before, I share a publisher with David Hicks, Random House Australia, though I have never met him nor read his book. Like quite a few old Afghan hands, I was disappointed to hear that his time in Pakistan and Afghanistan did not receive more attention within its 450-plus pages.

The journalist, Sally Neighbour, who is an expert both on South Asia and militant Islam, gave it a scathing review. She called it "a self-serving, sanitised and disingenuous account".

Guantanamo was only part of the story, she argues.

"The other parts include how he got there in the first place, what he was doing in Pakistan and Afghanistan, why he was regarded as such an important catch and why he was held for more than five years while others were freed."

The government's prosecution has provided terrific free publicity for a book which has sold less copies than its publisher would have hoped. But should David Hicks reap any financial harvest?

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Marine aviator in Afghanistan receives second star

Camp Leatherneck, Aug 4 (Newswire): The commanding general of 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing (Forward) pinned on his second star in a ceremony at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan.

Newly promoted Maj. Gen. Glenn M. Walters deployed to Afghanistan in February from Cherry Point air station. In Afghanistan, Walters leads the aviation combat element in support of NATO International Security Assistance Force's Regional Command Southwest.
 "I pin on another star today, not due to my own efforts, but because of the quality of Marines that serve in my command," said Walters following the promotion ceremony. "They are the only reason I am a major general today."

The general commands thousands of Marines and other coalition troops who work together to provide aerial medical evacuation, close-air support, and troop and cargo transport using a variety of Marine Corps and British aircraft.

The aviation forces under Walters' command support U.S., NATO coalition and Afghan operations in Afghanistan's Nimruz and Helmand provinces.

Walters was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps in May 1979, following his graduation from The Citadel. After attending flight school, Walters flew AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters.

In August 2003, Walters became the first commanding officer of Marine Tiltrotor Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 22, at New River air station. There, Walters and his Marines oversaw the testing of the MV-22B Osprey, a Marine Corps aircraft which has become a fixture in the Afghan skies.

Walters' personal awards include Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, two Meritorious Service Medals, Air Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.

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Deployed soldier invents bomb-foiling device

Pasab, Aug 4 (Newswire): The Taliban will use just about anything to hide bombs, and a perfect spot is a culvert underneath a road.

Now many of the culverts near this base in Kandahar province are no longer prime bomb-hiding locations, thanks to the ingenuity of a Wisconsin soldier.

Cpl. Eric DeHart, 38, of Birnamwood worked as a senior designer for Wausau Homes before joining the Army for the first time at the age of 36, losing 80 pounds in six months to enlist.

When his Army Reserves unit — Wausau-based 428th Engineer CompanyComp — arrived in southern Afghanistan last fall, his platoon leader asked him to solve the culvert problem.

An engineer by trade, DeHart said he began to think about the best way to make culverts safe from roadside bombs, and soon he came up with a solution.

At first DeHart said he thought about building devices in a few sizes. He soon learned that although culverts in the U.S. are uniformly sized, that's not the case in Afghanistan.

Then he said he hit on a solution.

"If we used a cone, you could shove it in and it can fit anything from 12 inches to 36 inches," said DeHart, a 1992 White Lake High School grad.

His culvert-denial system — which looks like a screen across the opening — allows water and debris to pass through but doesn't leave enough space for improvised explosive devices.

When 1st Lt. Jeremy Crochiere first met DeHart on this deployment, the platoon leader learned DeHart was an engineer. Crochiere, who attended a class on IED threats in culverts before arriving in Afghanistan, noted that previous U.S. military attempts at culvert denial systems didn't work because they plugged up with water and debris, especially during the rainy season.

"When we told (another unit) we had a homegrown system that works, they were pretty excited," said Crochiere, 27, of Minocqua

DeHart, who drives a Buffalo road clearance vehicle and works in intelligence in the 428th, started working on his culvert-denial system in December. By January, he had built his prototype from scratch, using half-inch and 5/8-inch rebar he scrounged from another unit and borrowing the tools he needed, including grinding wheels and welding rods.

He did all the cutting and welding of the initial devices and figures he spent about 50 hours of his free time for the concept, initial construction and training. He also wrote a manual explaining how to install the device in the field. The rest of the culvert denial systems were built by a brigade support battalion.

The 428th installed four devices — now called the DeHart Culvert Denial System — and the 101st Airborne placed more than 30 in Kandahar province.

No IEDs have been found in those culverts since they were installed last winter.

"To me, that's a success story," said Capt. Jim Servi, commander of the 428th. "The ingenuity and initiative guys like DeHart have — they're never satisfied. They want to make things better."

Engineering plans for DeHart's culvert denial system were sent to other units throughout southern Afghanistan. Aside from the 101st Airborne, no other units have yet used them. But DeHart, who is returning home to his wife and 11-year-old daughter next month, is hopeful his system will make roads safer throughout Afghanistan.

"It made my tour over here worthwhile," DeHart said. "I wanted to leave something permanent in Afghanistan."

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Tropical storm Emily on path toward Haiti

Port-Au-Prince, Aug 4 (Newswire): Tropical Storm Emily brushed past Puerto Rico and headed toward the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where more than 630,000 people are still without shelter after last year's earthquake.

A "steady shield of rain" should reach the island of Hispaniola shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti around noon Wednesday and the rainfall should worsen by late afternoon, said John Dlugoenski, senior meteorologist with Accuweather.com.

"The biggest threat to lives is probably the flooding," Dlugoenski said.

Civil defense officials and the military in the Dominican Republic have already begun moving people out of high-risk zones ahead of the storm. Haitian authorities urged people to conserve food and safeguard their belongings.

In Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince, Jislaine Jean-Julien, a 37-year-old street merchant displaced by the January 2010 earthquake, said she was praying the storm would pass her flimsy tent without knocking it over.

"For now, God is the only savior for me," Jean-Julien said at the edge of a crowded encampment facing the quake-destroyed National Palace. "I would go some place else if I could but I have no place else to go."

Haitian emergency authorities set aside a fleet of 22 large white buses in the event they needed to evacuate people from flooded areas. Emergency workers would then bus the people to dozens of schools, churches and other buildings that will serve as shelters.

"We're working day and night to be able to respond quickly in case we have any disasters," said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, director of Haiti's Civil Protection Agency.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain could fall in some parts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which could cause life-threatening flash floods and mud slides in areas of mountainoust terrain.

Emergency workers, both Haitian and foreign, also sent out text messages to cell phone users, alerting them to the approaching storm and to take precautions such as staying with friends or relatives if that were an option.

Such advisories are not uncommon but few in Haiti have the means to heed them because of the crushing poverty.

"This is not the first time we've heard these messages," said Alexis Boucher, a 29-year-old man who lives in Place Boyer, a public square that became a camp after the earthquake. "We receive these messages and yet we still don't have anywhere to go."

A slow-moving storm that triggered mudslides and floods in Haiti killed at least 28 people in June.

The United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti notified its 11,500 troops to be on standby in case they need to respond, said Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, a spokeswoman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies also, put emergency teams on standby, which have access to relief supplies already in place for up to 125,000 people in seaside towns throughout the country.

In the Dominican Republic's southern tourist districts, workers at hotels and restaurants gathered up umbrellas, tables, chairs, and anything else that might be blown away.

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Muslims are loyal to US and hopeful, poll finds

Washington, Aug 4 (Newswire): Nine out of 10 Muslim Americans said that their co-religionists in the United States were not sympathetic to Al Qaeda, the group held responsible for the 2001 attacks.

Majorities in other religious groups agreed that Muslim Americans did not sympathize with Al Qaeda, but the percentages were much lower.

The poll in many ways contradicts the stereotype of Muslim Americans as an alienated and discontented religious minority. It was conducted by telephone from Feb. 10 to March 11, 2010, and Oct. 1 to 21, 2010, by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, a Gallup-affiliated research group based in the United Arab Emirates.

The poll, which included interviews with 2,482 adults of whom 475 said they were Muslim, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus seven percentage points for Muslims.

"It's not a completely rosy picture," said Mohamed Younis, senior analyst with the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies in Washington and an author of the study.

"The prejudice and discrimination are definitely there, and that's something we have consistently seen in the data," Mr. Younis said. "But at the same time many of the people in the Muslim-American community seem to be doing relatively well, and part of their doing well is being able to be full-fledged Americans, to participate in the American experience."

The poll found that Muslim Americans were the most likely of any religious group to express confidence in the fairness of elections. The researchers speculated that this might be because of their high levels of support for President Obama, who said early in his term that he would make it a priority to repair relationships with the Muslim world.

Since the terrorist attacks 10 years ago, Muslim Americans have been the target of intense scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in counterterrorism investigations. Sixty percent of Muslims said in the survey that they had confidence in the F.B.I. That was fewer than those in other religious groups: about 75 percent of Americans in other religious groups said they had confidence in the F.B.I.

The sphere in which Muslim Americans were most critical of their country is in foreign policy. They are more likely than any other religious group to call the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a mistake. Muslims also have the lowest level of confidence in the United States military of any faith group (70 percent for Muslims compared with more than 90 percent for all other religious groups, with the exception of atheists, with about 80 percent).

Two-thirds of Muslims who were asked the question said that the reason people in Muslim countries have unfavorable views of the United States was "based mostly on what the U.S. has done" — and not "based mostly on misinformation."

Among the most intriguing findings: two-thirds of American Muslims say they identify strongly with the United States, about the same percentage as those who say they identify strongly with their religion. But other religious groups identified far more than Muslims with the United States. Protestants, Catholics and Jews said they identified with the United States far more strongly than they identified with their respective faiths.

Almost half of Muslim Americans said that they had experienced religious or racial discrimination in the last year. That was far more than the members of any other religious group. About one-third of Mormons said they had experienced discrimination in the last year, putting them second in that category after Muslims. About one-fifth of Jews, Catholics and Protestants said they had experienced prejudice.

On many key questions in the poll, it was American Jews whose answers most resembled those of Muslims. Jews were the most likely of any religious group besides Muslims to say that Muslims are loyal Americans, and that the war in Iraq was a mistake. Jews were just as likely as Muslims to say that American Muslims face prejudice.

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Independent women lead social change in Japan

Niigata, Aug 4 (Newswire): Onstage in front of about 5,000 ecstatic fans, Nic Endo unleashes a torrent of beats and shouts to help Japanese vent their feelings about their recent disasters.

"We need to release our subdued feelings," she told The Washington Times in an interview after a frenzied performance by her pioneering digital hard-core band, Atari Teenage Riot, at the Fuji Rock Festival.

"Japanese are not very outspoken and open about their feelings. But it's not healthy to just swallow everything," said Miss Endo, 35. "Many people here said it's a good thing for Atari Teenage Riot to play here now, to help people let their emotions out."

Known for her avant-garde musical creations and radical makeup, Miss Endo — who was born in Texas and raised in Germany by a German father and Japanese mother — is among hundreds of women with Japanese ancestry who play important roles in the global entertainment scene.

Whether onstage or at the largest protests here in 40 years, women also are increasingly at the forefront of movements for social evolution in Japan, where men vastly outnumber women in boardrooms, in government and especially in the nuclear power industry.

Mizuho Fukushima, the diminutive leader of the Social Democratic Party, has won many supporters for her straight talk about Japanese politics and her unambiguous stands for policies that support women, young people and workers.

After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, a group led by mothers from hard-hit Fukushima province gained public attention by going to Tokyo to dump soil from Fukushima in front of the Education Ministry to demand more testing of children and stronger measures against rising levels of radiation.

Even before the disasters, Japanese women earned a global reputation for adopting alternative lifestyles and calling for progress: Outspoken underground artist Yoko Ono married John Lennon and became perhaps the most famous woman ever from Japan.

An icon of the anti-war movement in the United States in the 1960s and '70s, Miss Ono remains at the forefront of the peace movement in Japan and often leads festivals in Japan showcasing a younger generation of performers.

Over the weekend, Miss Ono spoke at an international symposium about peace and abolition of nuclear weapons, attended by 700 people at a conference center in Hiroshima. She said the people of Fukushima, where nuclear reactors have melted down, could walk the same "road of hope" as Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors.

Also in Hiroshima, actress Sayuri Yoshinaga, 66, made news in Japan last weekend by publicly criticizing nuclear power. "People often talk about using nuclear power in a peaceful or harmonious way, but to me, that sounds like a vague platitude," she said.

Inspired by Miss Ono, women have long dominated the underground music scene in Tokyo, Osaka and other cities.

In the mid-'90s, outrageous all-girl bands such as Shonen Knife, Super Junky Monkey and Melt Banana blazed trails for hundreds of other female artists in Japan, where current bands such as Molice, Bo Peep and Lazy Guns Brisky continue to gain cult followings among foreigners in Japan and overseas.

Tokyo-based pop star Kat McDowell, 27, said she used to draw strange looks when she was the only female worker in a guitar store in New Zealand, where she was raised by her expatriate Japanese mother.

But when she returned to her native Japan at age 21, she was amazed to see so many women working in music stores, studios and bands.

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Keep the windows and sunroofs closed in Bearizona

Bearizona, Aug 4 (Newswire): About an hour's drive south of the Grand Canyon, Bearizona is one of those drive-through wilderness parks that are a step up from a zoo but far removed from the actual wild.

One motors along a two-mile road through 160 acres, getting glimpses of wolves, sheep, bison, mountain goats, burros and then, finally, fenced off to themselves, the bears that lend this place its name.

Windows must remain closed inside Bearizona, although none of the warning signs say anything about sunroofs, which prompts some youngsters, their game consoles forgotten, to poke their heads out for better views.

This has been a year of living dangerously with bears after a string of attacks on humans in Alaska, New Jersey, Wyoming and here in Arizona. Still, the cars continue to pull up to the front gate of Bearizona, which has been open about a year.

There are a dozen or so bears hidden in the wooded area, but one sees none at first. After peering through the trees on a rainy afternoon, though, a black figure emerges off in the distance, then another. Soon, bears of all sizes come into focus. They are not approaching the minivans and SUVs that are rolling through their habitat, but they do not seem overly concerned about the intruders either.

The bears drink from a vat of water, climb atop a manufactured cave and walk through the forest as bears do. They look very much like bears would look on the outside. Except for one.

Named Cher Bear, she stands at the fence line and sways back and forth for hours on end, as if confined in a tight cage, which the bear attendant explains had been her fate in Ohio before being let loose in Bearizona. She wanders some but always returns to the same spot to pace and sway. "It is like the bear does not fully understand that she's out," the attendant says.

This troubled bear, small and fierce but vulnerable looking, stares out through the fence into the rest of Arizona, thinking who knows what.

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US seeks pressure on Syria, but options are few

Washington, Aug 4 (Newswire): The Obama administration is facing intensifying calls to punish Syria more forcefully for its bloody crackdown on protests, but officials say that without broader international support they have few options to increase pressure on President Bashar al-Assad's government.

A group of senators introduced legislation that would impose even stronger economic sanctions against Syria than those already imposed against Mr. Assad and a coterie of senior aides. Italy, meanwhile, withdrew its ambassador to Syria and called on other nations to do so, echoing calls by Republicans for President Obama to do the same.

In New York, the United Nations Security Council discussed the violence for a second day on Tuesday but remained divided over how strongly to react. A spokesman for the United Nations secretary general issued the organization's sharpest criticism yet, saying Mr. Assad had "lost all sense of humanity."

In Washington, administration officials vowed tougher measures but stopped short of announcing any new ones, underscoring how difficult a diplomatic and political challenge the crackdown in Syria has become for Mr. Obama.

The administration plans to expand on sanctions first imposed in May, officials said, but the legal process for doing that has lagged behind Syria's accelerating violence against protesters, including brutal attacks that began on Sunday in Hama and other cities. The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 1,500 Syrians since March, according to the United Nations, which cited human rights groups' reports.

The American ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford, testifying before the Senate on Tuesday, said sanctions against senior Syrian officials were beginning to bite. He also disclosed that the administration was discussing additional sanctions with the Europeans that would have a more direct effect, since those imposed by the United States already severely limit American trade with Syria.

Underscoring the administration's clear but not explicitly stated goal of a new government in Syria, Mr. Ford said it was important that any punitive sanctions be calibrated in such a way as to not devastate the economy in a "post-Assad" era.

After initially holding out hope that Mr. Assad would heed the protests that have swept the Arab world this year, Mr. Obama has steadily intensified his criticism — only to watch Syrian security forces respond to protesters with more and more force.

Diplomatically, the administration has concentrated its efforts on solidifying international condemnation of Mr. Assad's government, pressing members of the United Nations Security Council to consider a resolution initially floated by Britain in May but blocked by opposition from Russia and other nations angered in part by the NATO-led military operation against Libya.

"The international community has required more prodding in this case than in the case of Libya," a senior administration official said on Tuesday.

The conflict in Libya, in fact, has haunted the administration's handling of Syria in many ways, underscoring the limit of American political influence and military power in the two countries.

While Mr. Obama explicitly called for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's ouster, even an American-supported air war backing Libyan rebels has so far failed to bring about his removal. Administration officials say that the United States has even fewer levers in the case of Syria, given that a military option has been all but ruled out and Syria still has support from Arab League members and other countries.

There were signs on Tuesday that the attacks over the weekend had deepened Syria's diplomatic isolation. Russia, an important ally, signaled new support for some Security Council action, though it was unclear how far it would go. "We are not categorically against everything," Sergei Vershinin, a department head within the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in Moscow. "We are categorically against what doesn't help bring forward a peaceful settlement."

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Cubans set for big change: right to buy homes

Havana, Aug 4 (Newswire): José is an eager almost-entrepreneur with big plans for Cuban real estate. Right now he works illegally on trades, linking up families who want to swap homes and pay a little extra for an upgrade.

But when Cuba legalizes buying and selling by the end of the year — as the government promised again this week — José and many others expect a cascade of changes: higher prices, mass relocation, property taxes and a flood of money from Cubans in the United States and around the world.

"There's going to be huge demand," said José, 36, who declined to give his last name, stepping away from the crowd and keeping an eye out for eavesdroppers. "It's been prohibited for so long."

Private property is the nucleus of capitalism, of course, so the plan to legitimize it here in a country of slogans like "socialism or death" strikes many Cubans as jaw-dropping. Indeed, most people expect onerous regulations and already, the plan outlined by the state media would suppress the market by limiting Cubans to one home or apartment and requiring full-time residency.

Yet even with some state control, experts say, property sales could transform Cuba more than any of the economic reforms announced by President Raúl Castro's government, some of which were outlined in the National Assembly on Monday. Compared with the changes already passed (more self-employment and cell-phone ownership), or proposed (car sales and looser emigration rules), "nothing is as big as this," said Philip Peters, an analyst with the Lexington Institute.

The opportunities for profits and loans would be far larger than what Cuba's small businesses offer, experts say, potentially creating the disparities of wealth that have accompanied property ownership in places like Eastern Europe and China.

Havana in particular may be in for a move back in time, to when it was a more stratified city. "There will be a huge rearrangement," said Mario Coyula, Havana's director of urbanism and architecture in the 1970s and '80s. "Gentrification will happen."

Broader effects could follow. Sales would encourage much-needed renovation, creating jobs. Banking would expand because, under newly announced rules, payments would come from buyers' accounts. Meanwhile, the government, which owns all property now, would hand over homes and apartments to their occupants in exchange for taxes on sales — impossible in the current swapping market where money passes under the table.

And then there is the role of Cuban emigrants. While the plan seems to prohibit foreign ownership, Cuban-Americans could take advantage of Obama administration rules letting them send as much money as they like to relatives on the island, fueling purchases and giving them a stake in Cuba's economic success. "That is politically an extremely powerful development," Mr. Peters said, arguing that it could spur policy changes by both nations.

The rate of change, however, will likely depend on complications peculiar to Cuba. The so-called Pearl of the Antilles struggled with poor housing even before the 1959 Revolution, but deterioration, rigid rules and creative work-arounds have created today's warren of oddities.

There are no vacancies in Havana, Mr. Coyula pointed out. Every dwelling has someone living in it. Most Cubans are essentially stuck where they are.

On the waterfront of central Havana, children peek out from buildings that should be condemned, with a third of the facade missing.

Blocks inland, Cubans like Elena Acea, 40, have subdivided apartments to Alice in Wonderland proportions. Her two-bedroom is now a four-bedroom, with a plywood mezzanine where two stepsons live one atop the other, barely able to stand in their own rooms.

Like many Cubans, she hopes to move — to trade her apartment for three smaller places so the elder son, 29, can start his own family. "He's getting married," she said. "He has to move out."

But despite reassurances — on Monday, Marino Murillo, a top official on economic policy, said selling would not need prior government approval — Ms. Acea and many neighbors seemed wary of the government's promise to let go. Some Cubans expect rules forcing buyers to hold properties for five or 10 years. Others say the government will make it hard to take profits off the island, through exorbitant taxes or limits on currency exchange.

Still more, like Ernesto Benítez, 37, an artist, cannot imagine a real open market. "They're going to set one price, per square foot, and that's it," he said.

Of course, he added, Cubans would respond by setting their own prices. And that might be enough to stimulate movement, he said.

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More evidence that supply matters

New York, Aug 4 (Newswire): The supply of various types of workers has increased during the recession, continuing an earlier trend. That such trends continue to be associated with trends for employment contradicts the Keynesian claim that supply suddenly stops mattering during recessions and "liquidity traps."

A number of bloggers have pointed out that employment in Texas has been rising and has almost reached prerecession levels. Paul Krugman's explanation is that the supply of people available and willing to work has been increasing in Texas, continuing a previous trend.

One example of that supply is the inflow of immigrants from nearby Mexico; another is the migration of Americans seeking cheaper housing. I might quibble about the details, but I agree that supply trends are crucial for understanding what has happened in Texas.

In previous posts I have pointed out that national employment per capita actually increased among the elderly during the recession. I, and other researchers, concluded that elderly employment deviated so much from the general population because of changes in elderly labor supply.

In reaction to my post, Dean Baker attributed the elderly increase during the recession to a previous trend. Because the previous trend was itself the result of supply, Dr. Baker's explanation of the recession is essentially a supply increase, too.

So we all agree that in at least two cases labor supply increased during the recession, and in each case the result was more jobs for the affected groups, or at least fewer job losses than in the general population.

Recession-era supply episodes like these are important to identify, because they can prove or reject Keynesians' fundamental assertion (so far unproven) that supply does not matter during a recession or a "liquidity trap" such as we've experienced since the recession began.

Consider, hypothetically, an immigration trend that continued even after the recession. In my view, the market would create jobs for many, but not all, of the immigrants and would continue to do so after the recession.

In the Keynesian view, immigration might create jobs before the recession, but could not create them once the recession began because "what's limiting employment now is lack of demand for the things workers produce," Professor Krugman wrote. "Their incentives to seek work are, for now, irrelevant."

In the Keynesian view, all that extra supply does during the recession is add to unemployment rather than adding to employment. In other words, supply trends normally affect employment, but Keynesians assert that they cease to affect employment during a recession or liquidity trap.

The chart below shows monthly employment (left scale) and unemployment (right scale) in Texas since 2007. Despite the fact that our nation is in a liquidity trap (near-zero interest rates on Treasury bills, the results of the extra supply in Texas since 2009 have been to increase employment much more than increase unemployment.

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A few accounting essentials can spell survival

New York, Aug 4 (Newswire): Few people start a business because they are good with numbers. In fact, the terms "accounting" and "financial analysis" tend to put business owners to sleep or send them screaming from the room. But to run a business effectively, most owners need to have some understanding of their finances.

Make sure your current landlord knows that you have hired a broker and are serious about getting a better deal -- even if you have to move.

Tracking your break-even number can help you spot problems before it's too late.

It is, for example, entirely possible for a company to be profitable but fail anyway because it does not have enough cash coming in to pay its bills.

"It's like a racecar that goes too fast and runs out of gas," said Doug Tatum, a serial entrepreneur who is a visiting professor of entrepreneurship at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. Business owners do not necessarily need to know how to prepare a balance sheet, but they do have to know which gauges to watch.

One obvious step is to work with a bookkeeper or accountant, someone who can help navigate arcane accounting and tax rules and organize your affairs. But owners should understand that accounting is not just about paying taxes or reporting results.

"Small-business owners tend to hate accounting because it's boring," said Brian Hamilton, chief executive of Sageworks, a company in Raleigh, N.C., that tracks financial data for privately held businesses. "The mistake they make is not thinking about how they can use certain numbers as tools to better manage where their business is headed tomorrow."

What follows is a guide to better understanding the numbers that drive a business. As the examples make clear, even smart people with advanced degrees can become confused by accounting issues.

After earning a master's degree in industrial engineering, Bart Justice figured he would get a job doing computer simulations or technical sales.

Then in 2004, he learned about the paper-shredding industry, which was booming because of a rash of new security laws. Mr. Justice obtained a loan from a local bank to buy a mobile shredding truck, hired a truck driver and opened shop in Huntsville, Ala., as Secure Destruction Service.

The company hit $70,000 in sales its first year. Within four years, Secure Destruction had annual revenue of $500,000 and employed six people across two offices, one in Huntsville, the other in Birmingham, Ala.

To finance his growth — adding a shredding truck, for example — Mr. Justice kept borrowing money from the bank, not realizing that the more he grew, the more he needed to borrow because his revenue was not covering his expenses. The loans meant he had money in his accounts — but it was borrowed money.

"I knew how to print a financial statement from QuickBooks, but I couldn't tell you what it meant," he said.

It was not until early 2008 when he joined a peer group for Christian business owners called C12, that Mr. Justice was forced to confront the truth. "They would ask me questions about my numbers, and I didn't know how to answer them," he said. "They told me my business was going to fail unless I got a handle on paying down my debt."

He hired an accountant and began analyzing how aspects of his business were performing, which led him to sell several pieces of equipment and to stop serving clients if he was losing money on them.

The advice proved timely. As the recession set in, the market for shredding collapsed. But with a leaner and smarter operation, Secure Destruction survived.

Two years ago, Paul Burns brought on Eric Edelson as a partner to help run Fireclay Tile, which is based in San Jose, Calif., and manufactures ceramic tile using recycled materials. Mr. Edelson, who had left a career as an investment banker in New York to get an M.B.A. at Stanford, knew the business had been struggling, but he was hopeful that he could help.

One number that looked impressive to him was the company's accounts receivable balance, which was more than $100,000. That was money owed to Fireclay by its wholesale clients. "At first, I thought it was kind of neat since we could count on all that cash coming in," Mr. Edelson said. "But after I started digging into it, I noticed a lot of stale accounts that were more than six months overdue."

Mr. Edelson hired a third-party company to help Fireclay collect its receivables, but many of the companies had gone out of business. Sensing a lost cause, he changed tactics. After writing off most of the balance, he stopped sending new shipments to customers who had a balance due and started getting more upfront payments and staying on top of customers.

By making sure customers could not buy more tile until they paid for what they had already bought, Mr. Edelson gave his customers an incentive to pay up. That has helped cut Fireclay's receivables balance to less than $30,000.

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Ex-directors of failed firms have little to fear

New York, Aug 4 (Newswire): Do the former directors of the institutions that collapsed during the financial crisis have anything to worry about? If the experience of Enron is any example, the answer is a resounding no.

A look back at the career paths of onetime Enron directors indicates that the former directors of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers will continue their prominent careers.

Enron collapsed into bankruptcy in 2001 amid accusations of accounting improprieties and outright fraud. The scandal sent shock waves through corporate America, but compared with the global financial crisis, it almost seems small and quaint.

Still, in the case of Enron, unlike in the financial crisis, top corporate executives went to prison. Most prominently, Jeffrey Skilling, a former chief executive of Enron, was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

Yet while some Enron executives paid a price for the scandal, it is a different story with Enron's former directors — the people charged with overseeing the company. A search of their current whereabouts shows that they have recovered nicely from the scandal.

Four former Enron directors still serve on public boards. Frank Savage, for example, still heads his own investment firm and serves on the boards of Bloomberg L.P. and Lockheed Martin. Norman P. Blake Jr. serves on the board of Owens Corning, where he is the head of that company's audit committee.

A number have gone back to or entered academia. Wendy Gramm, the wife of the former senator Phil Gramm, vice chairman of UBS investment bank, is still in residence at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Robert K. Jaedicke, who was chairman of Enron's audit committee, teaches at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. And Lord John Wakeham has remained chancellor of Brunel University in London.

The private sector Enron directors also continued their careers without much of a hiccup. Ken L. Harrison retired as chief executive of the Portland General Electric Company last year. And Ronnie C. Chan has remained chairman of the Hang Lung Group in Hong Kong since Enron's collapse.

Most of the remaining directors have since retired or now work in small private or family businesses, a euphemism for semiretirement.

John Mendelsohn, for example, is to retire next month as head of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Then there is Rebecca Mark-Jusbasche. She was named one of the "luckiest persons in Houston" by Fortune magazine. Ms. Mark-Jusbasche left the Enron board in 2000, selling more than $80 million worth of company stock. She now runs family properties in New Mexico and Colorado.

A few of the directors conveniently omit Enron from their biographies, but they do not appear to remain tainted, staying in their chosen professions.

The only court penalty placed upon them was related to a $165 million settlement of shareholder litigation arising from Enron's demise. The directors personally had to pay a relatively large $13 million. The rest was covered by insurance.

The experiences of the Enron directors over the last decade would appear to offer great hope to the directors of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

Indeed, many of these directors remain not only as directors of public companies from before the financial crisis, but they have joined new boards. Even Alan Greenberg is still on the Viacom board with a fellow Bear board alumnus, Frederic V. Salerno, who serves on six public company boards. In all, 6 of the 12 Bear directors at the time of the investment bank's collapse are still directors of public companies.

None of the Bear directors have appeared to have career difficulties. The two academics on the board were the Rev. Donald J. Harrington, who remains the president of St. John's University, and Henry S. Bienen, who is emeritus president of Northwestern University. Frank T. Nickell is still chief executive, president and chairman of Kelso & Company, while Paul A. Novelly remains C.E.O. of the Apex Oil Company.

In fact, with the exception of James E. Cayne, none are fully retired or appear to be having trouble finding good positions.

It is the same for Lehman Brothers, with Richard S. Fuld Jr., the former chief executive, bearing the brunt of the public approbation. He is at his own firm, Matrix Advisors, and — fairly or unfairly — remains the focus of blame for Lehman's demise.

As for the other Lehman directors, six of them held directorships as recently as January. Jerry A. Grundhofer was appointed to the Citigroup board after Lehman's fall. He has since resigned from that board, but he remains on the boards of EcoLab and the Midland Company. Roland A. Hernandez joined the Sony board and still remains on the boards of MGM Mirage, the Ryland Group and Vail Resorts.

The rest of the board members were mostly private investors. Roger S. Berlind was and still is a theatrical producer. Michael L. Ainslie, former chief executive of Sotheby's, is a private investor. Christopher Gent is a senior adviser to the consulting group Bain & Company as well as nonexecutive chairman of GlaxoSmithKline.

So the Bear and Lehman directors are returning to public company service even quicker than the Enron directors. In part this reflects the old boy network on Wall Street, which keeps people in the same positions because of friendships. It is not a coincidence that two former Bear Stearns directors serve on the Viacom board.

The trend also underscores the decline in the importance of reputation on Wall Street — even since the time of Enron. Prior bad conduct simply is often not viewed as a problem.

But in the case of the Bear and Lehman directors there is another significant factor. The financial crisis was an enormously complex event, and people will be debating its causes for years to come. Blame can be dispersed, and an executive or director can simply say it was the crisis itself — not poor management or inadequate board supervision — that caused their firm's demise.

I am not arguing that these directors be tarred and feathered or that they should not be able to earn a living, but rather that there should be market penalties for failure — just as Ms. Gramm's Mercatus Center often argues. At a minimum, one would think that other public companies might be more hesitant to keep these failed directors on their boards.

In the end, the directors of companies that failed in the financial crisis will most likely receive an even freer pass than the Enron directors.

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KKR 2nd-quarter earnings fall 25%

New York, Aug 4 (Newswire): Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has said that its second-quarter profit fell 25 percent as growth slowed in its main investment businesses.

The private equity giant reported $245.3 million in economic net income after taxes atop $117.6 million in fees. That amounts to an after-tax profit of 36 cents a stock unit; analysts had, on average, expected a profit of 41 cents, according to the market researcher Capital IQ.

Economic net income is a nonstandard profit measure used by publicly traded private equity firms that excludes some stock-based compensation costs. On a generally accepted accounting principles basis, K.K.R. earned $39.6 million for the quarter.

The firm said assets under management grew to $61.9 billion. Much of that growth resulted from an increase in the value of K.K.R.'s investments, as well as from newly raised capital.


"In an increasingly challenged global economic environment, our business continued its growth trajectory across all segments," Henry R. Kravis and George R. Roberts, the firm's co-founders and co-chairmen, said in a statement.

K.K.R.'s second-quarter performance trailed that of its main rival, the Blackstone Group, which more than tripled its profit for the period, thanks to its huge real estate arm.

Since becoming a public company, K.K.R. has focused on building up its operations outside of its core leveraged buyout business. The firm has raised billions of dollars for energy and infrastructure investments, and it has bolstered its nascent credit trading division.

Still, K.K.R. pointed to successes in its traditional private equity business. The unit increased assets under management to $47.1 billion, offset by payments made to its investors through the sales of portfolio companies and assets.

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Switzerland takes surprise action to weaken the franc

Geneva, Aug 4 (Newswire): Switzerland's central bank moved unexpectedly Wednesday to ease the pressure on the Swiss economy caused by the super-strong franc, which has soared to record highs as debt crises buffet the United States and Europe.

Declaring their currency "massively overvalued," the Swiss National Bank cut its key interest rate target, and said it would raise the supply of liquidity to the Swiss franc money market in the next few days in a bid to weaken the franc.

An avalanche of dollars and euros has been tumbling into this Alpine outpost at record rates, as investors see the franc as a haven from the twin debt crises in the United States and Europe. But its resulting strength risks undermining economic growth in Switzerland and stoking inflation, the central bank said.

"The franc is like the new gold," said a Geneva banker who would give only his first name, Dmitri, insisting on the discretion that is the hallmark of this reserved nation. "It's crazy and it's all anyone is talking about, in the morning, at lunch, at dinner parties."

It was certainly Topic A at the noon lunch hour recently in Geneva, where Dmitri and other dark-suited bankers had emerged from the doors of Credit Suisse, UBS, Goldman Sachs and many other wealthy banks to perch near the broad expanse of Lake Geneva to chew on grilled fish and the issues of the day.

Switzerland is vaunted as a country that attracts money for its secretive bank accounts and the less savory business of tax evasion. But it is also the home of "le franc fort," a muscular currency long seen as second perhaps only to the dollar because this nation — unlike some others — tends to have its finances in order.

Now the Swiss franc is  second no more.

Despite the passage at long last of a Washington deal to lift America's debt ceiling, the dollar has plunged to record lows against the Swiss franc on fears the American economy will slow further. It was trading at 77 Swiss centimes Wednesday, down about a third from the level of a year ago.

The euro has fared little better. As Europe succumbed to its own debt troubles last year, the franc took off against the euro. Now, as the latest European bailout for Greece fails to shield big countries like Italy and Spain from the credit contagion, one euro buys 1.11 Swiss francs — far less than the 1.38 francs it was worth a year ago.

With the rest of the world so untidy, Switzerland looks pristine. Despite a generous safety net, this tiny nation does not have other onerous expenses, like a big military. Its current account surplus is an enviable 15 percent of gross domestic product, and it has low debt. The economy grew 2.6 percent last year; unemployment is around 3 percent.

Still, while it's easy for Switzerland to lure other people's money, there may be such a thing as too much of it. Even for the Swiss.

The Swiss central bank sought to tamp down demand on Wednesday by narrowing its target band for a key rate, the 3-month Libor, to 0.00-0.25 percent from 0.00-0.75 percent to fight the franc's appreciation.

Authorities declared they "won't tolerate" a "tightening of monetary conditions," and would take further steps as necessary to curb the franc's rise.

The cost of fine Swiss-made goods, from watches to precision machinery, has gone from eye-popping to eye-watering, and Swiss companies are warning of peril.

"This is bad for the Swiss economy," said Thomas Christen, the chief executive of Lucerne-based Reed Electronics, who has started buying cheaper materials to offset his costs.

Everything from a cup of coffee to a Swiss Alpine ski vacation has been priced to the stretching point or beyond reach for many tourists.

Mark Tompkins and Serena Koenig of Boston were stunned during a recent visit. "A mixed drink at an average bar," Mr. Tompkins said, "was 18 to 20 Swiss francs" — $23 to $25 — "so two rounds of drinks for four people was crazy expensive."

In downtown Geneva, where a phalanx of regal storefronts glitter with diamonds and gold, Jean Loichot said his business from Americans and Europeans had slowed to a trickle.

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Russia becomes a magnet for US fast-food chains

Moscow, Aug 4 (Newswire):  Earlier in his career, Christopher Wynne put his Russian expertise to work researching arms proliferation for the American government. Now he's engaged in geopolitics of another sort: deploying American fast food for the emerging Russian middle class.

Mr. Wynne is the top franchisee in Russia for the Papa John's Pizza chain. His competitors include the American chains Sbarro and Domino's, and a Russian upstart, Pizza Fabrika. But so far, compared with the largely saturated United States market for fast food, Mr. Wynne says he is finding plenty of demand.

"I could succeed in my sleep there is so much opportunity here," said Mr. Wynne, who has just opened his 25th Papa John's outlet in Russia, doubling the number in the last year.

American fast food has been going global for years, of course. And China and India continue to be big expansion markets. But lately, the industry is finding a growing appetite for its fare in Russia — not only of pizza, but for Burger King's Whoppers, Cinnabon's Classic Rolls and Subway's barbecue pulled pork sandwiches, among others.

"As consumers have more disposable income they will spend it on fast food," Jack Russo, a fast-food industry analyst at Edward Jones, said in a telephone interview. He compares the market here to the United States half a century ago.

For years, McDonald's, which opened its first restaurant on Pushkin Square in 1990 and generated gigantic lines, was the only American fast-food chain in Russia. McDonald's now operates 279 restaurants in Russia.

But other chains are flocking in. Burger King has opened 22 restaurants, mostly in mall food courts, in two years. Carl's Jr. has 17 restaurants in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk. Wendy's has opened two restaurants including a flagship on Arbat Street in Moscow, and plans 180 throughout Russia by 2020.

The Subway sandwich chain has opened about 200 shops in Russia, working through several franchisees. Yum Brands, which owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, operates a co-branded chicken restaurant chain in Russia, called Rostik's-KFC, and Il Patio in the Italian food segment. Yum now has about 350 restaurants in Russia.

Paving the way has been Russia's development in many cities of the modern infrastructure needed for fast food to flourish — including malls with food courts, highways with drive-through locations, and specialty suppliers of frozen foods and packaging.

Moreover, Russian consumers are increasingly affluent, partly because of the trickle down from the nation's lucrative oil exports. And though they still trail far behind the average household income of Americans — $43,539 in the United States versus $7,276 here — Russian consumers tend to have a large portion of their money for discretionary spending.

They are unburdened by the hangover of consumer debt that has curbed American purchasing power. Nor do Russians have high medical bills because the health care system, if flawed, is largely socialized. The income tax is a flat 13 percent. And a majority of Russians own property mortgage-free, as a legacy of the mass privatization of apartments in the 1990s.

As a result, the fast-food chains find they can charge higher prices in Russia than in America. The average check at a Russian fast-food outlet — $8.92 according to research by a Wendy's franchisee here — is significantly higher than the United States average of $6.50.

A large "the works" pizza at Papa John's in the company's home base of Louisville, Ky., for example, costs $14, compared with $21.62 for the same pizza in Moscow.

Ready buyers include Valery V. Mamayev, a man who reached his 30s without ever ordering a pizza. But he has been a steady Papa John's customer since a shop opened in the spring in his neighborhood, the Maryino district, an hour's drive from central Moscow. Maryino is a cityscape of concrete apartment blocks, tangled skeins of traffic-clogged thoroughfares and, these days, an ever growing array of food chain outlets.

On a recent Sunday, Mr. Mamayev padded into the hallway of his apartment building in boxer shorts to take delivery of a pie topped with chorizo, salami, ham, Italian sausage and pepperoni.

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Sinthan-Kishtwar Road: Forgotten link to paradise

Kishtwar, Aug 4 (Newswire): There is something that the people of Jammu and Kashmir have focused their attention on: completion of the 83 kms long Kishtwar- Sinthan Top road—connecting Kashmir with Doda and Kishtwar regions of Jammu province.

And the reason is one: "it could give a huge fillip to the economy of a poor district like Kishtwar and also connect the Valley with the Jammu province via an alternate route."

But a ride along the road, marked by a landscape of sorts, reveals that the prized project stands forgotten, if not shelved.

As you quit the main town of Kishtwar, a signboard at Kishtwar brings cheer on your face. It reads: "Sinthan Top (Kashmir) 83 kms." As you proceed toward the place, understood to be at over 12000 ft, you get to know how official apathy has marred the project, causing a considerable degree of disappointment among people.

"The work on the Chatroo-Sinthan Top stretch is off for the past few years," says Ghulam Qadir, who runs a makeshift grocery at Chatroo.

"We are desperately waiting for the opening of this road, which could become a source of livelihood for scores of people in Kishtwar and Kashmir. The idea to open this road was to ensure people-to-people contact between the two regions of the state and also give fillip to their economy. But the project has been forgotten."

The road from Kishtwar to Sinthan Top is completely dilapidated, except for a few portions which stand macadamized. Water is seen flowing over the road while rocks, which have fallen on the road as a consequence of earth blasting work, are making it considerably difficult for people to proceed.

An odd one or two light motor vehicles are seen moving along the road after every half an hour or so. At some places, even the road widening work is yet to be carried out.

If anything surprises you, it is the landscape. Small rivulets flow along the road amid lush green pine trees. At several places, Gujjar dokas are seen situated amid sea-green mountains and trees, making an attractive feature.

"Shrines are an attraction in Kishtwar. Thousands of people from Kashmir visit these shrines every year. So the Sinthan Top-Kishtwar road could make it easy for them to travel. And it would also bring Kishtwar on the tourism map," Qadir says.

A traveler has to cover 290 kms to reach Kishtwar via the Srinagar-Jammu highway, but the Sinthan-Kishtwar road reduces the distance considerably.

The GREF, a subsidiary of the BRO, had been working on the project which would not only shorten the distance between Kishtwar and Islamabad (Anantnag) by six hours but also provide an alternative to the Srinagar-Jammu highway, which generally turns hostile during winter.

Some years back, the road would be fair-weather, with the J&K Government deciding to have funding from Ministry of Surface Transport to upgrade the road as an "alternate Srinagar-Jammu highway." While the GREF did some work initially, they stopped it later for unknown reasons. The Ministry has already declared the road as National Highway 1B.

While it is argued that the work on the road was stopped a few years back in the wake of killing of five BRO personnel, including a Lieutenant Colonel by unidentified gunmen at Sinthan, officials argue it should not become a cause of suspension of work.

"It there are any security concerns, they ought to be taken care of by the concerned quarters. But that should nevertheless lead to suspension of work," says an official in the Roads and Buildings Department. "It is important to understand the importance of this road in terms of tourism potential and easy people-to-people contact between different regions of the state."

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Doctors confirm torture marks

Srinagar, Aug 4 (Newswire): The inquiry officer probing the custodial killing of a youth in north Kashmir's Sopore town recorded statements of medicos who conducted autopsy on the body.

The medicos have reportedly confirmed torture marks on the body of the victim.

Reliable sources told Greater Kashmir that Sub-Divisional Magistrate Sopore Muhammad Ahsan Mir, probing the custodial killing of Nazim Rashid Shalla by police personnel, recorded the statements of three medicos.

 "There were torture marks on his body and apparently it seems he died due to torture. But things will be clear once the report from Forensic Science Laboratory comes," doctors told the inquiry officer.

Mir also visited Tarzoo police station "to leave no room for any laxity in the investigation" as Krankshivan Colony where from the deceased youth hailed falls in its jurisdiction.

"It was necessary as far as investigation is concerned. He (inquiry officer) found there was no lock-up or place to confine people which implies he died in SOG camp," sources said.
 They said entire focus of the magisterial probe would be now on quizzing the police personnel whose names are likely to be submitted by police tomorrow. The inquiry officer has sought the names of the police personnel from Superintendent of Police Sopore who were present in the SOG camp at the time the youth died in lock-up.

 "All eyes are on the list and it will show whether government is determined to punish the real culprits or just make some lower rung officials as scapegoats," they added.

Following the unrelenting protests, government suspended three cops- Sub-inspector Dilraj Singh, constables Muhammad Yousuf and Irshad Ahmad. Besides, SP Sopore Altaf Ahmad Khan was transferred and Deputy Superintendent of Police SOG, Ashiq Hussain Tak, was attached.

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New research might help people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder

Islamabad, Aug 4 (Newswire): The discovery of a mechanism in the brain explains for the first time why people make particularly strong, long-lasting memories of stressful events in their lives and could help sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The study, carried out by researchers from the University of Bristol's Henry Wellcome Laboratories for Integrative Neuroscience & Endocrinology (HW-LINE) in the School of Clinical Sciences, and funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The research found that stress hormones directly stimulate biochemical processes in neurons that play a role in learning and memory. The way these hormones stimulate these signalling and epigenetic processes in neurons is completely new and has never been shown before.

In the healthy brain these processes operate smoothly and help people to cope with and learn from stressful events in their lives. In vulnerable people or in strongly traumatized people (victims of rape or war), these processes may be disturbed and stressful events may result in the formation of highly traumatic memories such as those seen in patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The discovery may lead to new ways to develop drugs to help these patients and to prevent PTSD in trauma victims.

Professor Johannes Reul, Professorial Research Fellow in Neuroscience at HW-LINE, said: "Making memories of events in our lives is of critical importance in order to cope properly with new situations and challenges in the future. This is of particular importance for emotional and traumatic life events. Our newly discovered mechanism should be regarded as an adaptive mechanism. We believe this mechanism could be disturbed in stress-related psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety.

"The new findings may be of particular significance for patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as these patients are pained by pathological memories of an endured trauma (rape or war situations). We hope our discovery may help to generate a new class of drugs to help these patients."

The researchers found that stress-induced glucocorticoid hormones enhance memory formation through a direct, physical interaction of glucocorticoid-binding receptors ("glucocorticoid receptor") with a particular intracellular signalling pathway in a specific population of neurons of the hippocampus. This signalling pathway, the so-called ERK MAPK pathway, is known to be strongly involved in learning and memory processes but it was not known that it could interact with glucocorticoid receptors and that this would lead to an enhancement of memory formation.

This type of interaction has never been described before. The interaction has a major impact as the stimulated signalling cascade results in augmented epigenetic mechanisms in the nucleus of the affected neurons leading to enhanced expression of certain gene products. The induced gene products are known to evoke structural and functional changes in neurons allowing them to strengthen their role in the memory circuits of the brain.

It is well known that people make very strong memories of stressful, emotionally disturbing events in their lives. These so-called episodic memories are memories of the place (e.g. room, office) or surroundings where the event happened, how we felt at the time (mood), and the time of the day at which it happened. These kind of memories can last a lifetime.

The consolidation of such memories is taking place in a specific limbic brain region called the hippocampus -- part of the brain involved in memory and learning. Hormones secreted during stress like the glucocorticoid hormone cortisol (in rodents, corticosterone) act on the hippocampus to enhance the consolidation of these memories. However, until now it has been unknown how these hormones act on the hippocampus to enhance the formation of emotional event-related memories.

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Artificial nanoparticles influence heart rate and rhythm

Islamabad, Aug 4 (Newswire): Artificial nanoparticles are becoming increasingly pervasive in modern life. However, their influence on our health and the mechanisms by which they affect the human body remain largely shrouded in mystery.

Using a so-called Langendorff heart, a team of scientists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and the Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen has now for the first time shown that selected artificial nanoparticles have a direct effect on heart rate and heart rhythm.

The scientists are presenting their results in the journal ACS Nano.

In light of the increasing demand for artificial nanoparticles in medicine and industry, it is important for manufacturers to understand just how these particles influence bodily functions and which mechanisms are at play -- questions to which there has been a dearth of knowledge. Studies on heart patients have shown for decades that particulate matter has a negative effect on the cardiovascular system.

Yet, it remained unclear whether the nanoparticles do their damage directly or indirectly, for example through metabolic processes or inflammatory reactions. The reactions of the body are simply too complex.

Using a so-called Langendorff heart -- an isolated rodent heart flushed with a nutrient solution in place of blood -- scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen and the TU Muenchen were for the first time able to show that nanoparticles have a clearly measurable effect on the heart. When exposed to a series of commonly used artificial nanoparticles, the heart reacted to certain types of particles with an increased heart rate, cardiac arrhythmia and modified ECG values that are typical for heart disease.

"We use the heart as a detector," explains Professor Reinhard Nießner, Director of the Institute of Hydrochemistry at the TU Muenchen. "In this way we can test whether specific nanoparticles have an effect on the heart function. Such an option did not exist hitherto."

Scientists can also use this new model heart to shed light on the mechanism by which the nanoparticles influence the heart rate. In order to do this, they enhanced Langendorff's experimental setup to allow the nutrient solution to be fed back into the loop once it has flown through the heart. This allows the scientists to enrich substances released by the heart and understand the heart's reaction to the nanoparticles.

According to Stampfl and Nießner, it is very likely that the neurotransmitter noradrenaline is responsible for the increased heart rate brought on by nanoparticles. Noradrenaline is released by nerve endings in the inner wall of the heart. It increases the heart rate and also plays an important role in the central nervous system -- a tip-off that nanoparticles might also have a damaging effect there.

Stampfl and his team used their heart model to test carbon black and titanium dioxide nanoparticles, as well as spark-generated carbon, which serves as a model for airborne pollutants stemming from diesel combustion.

In addition, silicon dioxide, different Aerosil silicas used e.g. as thickening agents in cosmetics, and polystyrene were tested. Carbon black, spark-generated carbon, titanium dioxide and silicon dioxide led to an increase in the heart rate of up to 15 percent with altered ECG values that did not normalize, even after the nanoparticle exposure was ended. The Aerosil silicas and polystyrene did not show any effect on the heart function.

This new heart model may prove to be particularly useful in medical research. Here, artificial nanoparticles are increasingly being deployed as transportation vehicles. Their intrinsically large surfaces provide ideal docking grounds for active agents. The nanoparticles then transport the active agents to their destination in the human body, e.g. a tumor.

Most of the initial prototypes of such "nano containers" are carbon or silicate based. So far, the effect of these substances on the human body is largely unknown. The new heart model could thus serve as a test organ to help select those particles types that do not affect the heart in a negative way.

Artificial nanoparticles are also used in many industrial products -- some of them since decades. Their small size and their large surfaces (compared to their volume) impart these particles with unique characteristics.

The large surface area of titanium dioxide (TiO2), for example, leads to a large refractive index that makes the substance appear brilliant white. It is thus often used in white coating paints or as a UV blocker in sunscreens. So-called carbon black is also a widely used nanoparticle (mainly in car tires and plastics) with over 8 million tons produced annually. The small size of these nanoparticles (they measure only 14 nanometers across) makes them well suited as dyes, e.g. in printers and copying machines.

With their enhanced Langendorff heart, the researchers have now for the first time developed a measurement setup that can be used to analyze the effects of nanoparticles on a complete, intact organ without being influenced by the reactions of other organs.

The heart is a particularly good test object. "It has its own impulse generator, the sinus node, enabling it to function outside the body for several hours," Andreas Stampfl, first author of the study, explains. "Additionally, changes in the heart function can be clearly recognized using the heart rate and ECG chart."

"We now have a model for a superior organ that can be used to test the influence of artificial nanoparticles," Nießner explains further. "The next thing we want to do is to find out why some nanoparticles influence the heart function, while others do not influence the heart at all."

Both manufacturing process and shape may play an important role. Hence, the scientists plan further studies to examine the surfaces of different types of nanoparticles and their interactions with the cells of the cardiac wall.

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Mechanism of sculpting the plasma membrane of intestinal cells identified

Islamabad, Aug 4 (Newswire): The research group of Professor Pekka Lappalainen at the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki, has identified a previously unknown mechanism which modifies the structure of plasma membranes in intestinal epithelial cells.

Unlike other proteins with a similar function, the new protein -- named 'Pinkbar' by the researchers -- creates planar membrane sheets. Further research investigates the potential connection of this protein with various intestinal disorders.

A dynamic plasma membrane surrounds all eukaryotic cells. Membrane plasticity is essential for a number of cellular processes; changes in the structure of the plasma membrane enable cell migration, cell division, intake of nutrients and many neurobiological and immunological events.

Earlier research has shown that certain membrane-binding proteins can 'sculpt' the membrane to generate tubular structures with positive or negative curvature, and consequently induce the formation of protrusions or invaginations on the surface of the cell. These membrane-sculpting proteins are involved in various vital cellular processes and can control the shape of the plasma membrane with surprising precision. Many of them have also been linked to severe diseases such as cancer and neurological syndromes.

Identified by Anette Pykäläinen, a member of Professor Lappalainen's group who is currently finalising her dissertation, the new membrane sculpting protein has a different mechanism than other proteins studied previously. Instead of generating positive and negative curvature, the Pinkbar protein is able to produce planar membrane sheets.

Lappalainen's group determined the membrane-sculpting mechanism of Pinkbar in collaboration with an American research group. In humans, Pinkbar is only found in intestinal epithelial cells where it may be involved in the regulation of intestinal permeability.

In the future, it will be important to identify the exact physiological function of Pinkbar in intestinal epithelial cells and to study the possible links of this protein to various intestinal disorders.

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